Drive won't mount and can't read superblock. help!

[mobkon]

Hello! I am VERY new to knoppix and linux in general. I am trying to get data off a corrupt NTFS IDE drive that I had in a Windows XP machine. I cannot mount the drive because I get this error:

Could not mount device.
The reported error was:
mount: I could not determine the filesystem type, and none was specified


So I did some searching around the web and found some things to try in the root. this is what I tried, and this is the result I got:

root@2[knoppix]# fsck /check/hbd1
fsck 1.39-WIP (09-Apr-2006)
e2fsck 1.39-WIP (09-Apr-2006)
fsck.ext2: No such file or directory while trying to open /check/hbd1

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>


No idea what to try now. Like I said, this is the first time Im using Knoppix and Linux in general. I just need the data off this drive. It doesnt show up in Windows, but it does show up in the BIOS.

Any help would be great. Thanks!

[Harry Kuhman]

Unfortunately, while Knoppix can sometimes read partitions even when Windows will not, Windows is also quite capable of destroying it's directory information so much that Knoppix can't read it either. I have 2 hard drive in this state that I can't recover the data from (had 3 but gave up on one). There is still a chance that the partition is fine though, and that what has been mucked up is the partition table that points to the partition. In that case, Knoppix can examine the drive data and try to rebuild the partition table. A good partition table that points to the proper part of the disk for the partition would save your data. This has worked for many users here. read the man page for the command gpart or search the web for more information on gpart for details on this command. Good luck.